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Introduction – Funding vs. Creativity
The advantages of film
I believe that the most crucial problem facing the
performing arts today is that everybody wants to create art but not
enough people get funding. It is a current fact for artists that life
will be tough, due to the lack of remuneration involved in the pursuit of
almost any art. This is not really a new phenomenon. Yet, nationwide, artists
cry poor, and bemoan the state of a country that does not foster its artists.
Australia's population of 17 million is not enough to sustain an arts infrastructure. Private patronage of the arts in itself has not up until now generated enough money to pay our artists adequately. Our greatest authors do not earn the average wage, nor generally do our trombonists, actors, portrait painters, jazz pianists - or dancers.
Dally Messenger DANCE AUSTRALIA APRIL MAY 1991 ‘Notation’
The explanation of why not enough people receive funding is complex and could form the basis for a thesis on its own.
(Let me make the brief observation that artists seem to have the opinion that they should receive funding as a birthright. I believe this is an irresponsible and erroneous belief, and that only people who are truly advancing the art form should receive funding. Therefore because the artists who are actually pioneers of artistic breakthrough are few and far between, I see no inconsistency between the number of artists and the amount of government funding which is offered.)
Nevertheless, money is the foundation of the creation of any
art, however high or low, and the fact remains that because of its nature,
dance is an expensive art form:
…ballet is the most collaborative of the performing arts. A play can be written or an opera composed in the privacy of someone’s home or sitting on the seashore in the sun. The various components which make up a ballet require the direct collaboration of many people… John Cargher
Yet even if a company receives funding they are not guaranteed survival, much less longevity. No companies are given funding for life except perhaps the Australian Ballet (AB), the nation’s flagship ballet company, which is maintained largely as an international status symbol, despite any artistic reasons that may be cited. Even Graeme Murphy’s Sydney Dance Company (SDC), which is clearly both Australia’s most successful and most commercial dance company after the AB, and receives copious amounts of funding, is by no means a fixed and eternal establishment of Sydney:
Graeme Murphy… has his concerns about the level of funding available to his company: ‘It would probably take only two bum works to push us out of business.’
So given that there are very few dance companies that
receive even a fraction of the funding of the AB or SDC, how can a company
survive? If a dance company shifted its major focus from live performance
onto video projects, could this provide a financially secure base while
enabling the company to maintain the pursuit of artistic maturity?
I propose that the integration of video and film work into the foundational activity of a dance company could provide a clear direction for both artistic and financial survival of a dance company. I suggest that a company taking this direction would also generate audience growth, as well as provide for itself a long-term income stream, which would release it from much of the struggle for income that so often curtails a company’s artistic vision.
Paul Mercurio… I like in a film that you do a work and it’s
there.
…I like the fact that you can do something new on
film and it lives, and while it’s showing you can be doing something else new.
NB – I have used the words ‘film’ and ‘video’ throughout this paper. However it should be understood that the rapidly growing DVD format is equally part of this discussion as a viable distribution format for most of the types of projects discussed here.
Film is the medium of the modern and post-modern age, of both popular entertainment and serious art.
Globally, people bemoan the decline of opera, without realising that for all intents and purposes of the audience, opera still happens – in the cinema. For the entertainment, for the surrounding socialising, for the kudos amongst friends relating to what films one has seen recently: people go to the cinema for all the same reasons people always used to go to the opera. In fact cinema these days is much more powerful than opera ever used to be, considering that cinema reaches across all demographics whereas opera was available only to the wealthy.
The fact is that contemporary Australian society is not one that is favourably disposed to a regular Saturday night jaunt to the local contemporary dance company. They are more likely to go to the pub, the football, or… the cinema. Contemporary dance does not even register upon most people’s list of options for a night out.
For all kinds of reasons (which are again another story, fit for another thesis) the public perception of dance is so unfavourable that dance companies fight not only for funding, but they fight in the face of declining audiences also.
The survey found most sections of the arts industry
had been hit by falling audiences over the past 12 months, with live theatre
suffering the biggest drop. Musicals, contemporary dance, classical music and
ballet were also among the big losers.
But the survey found going to the cinema remained the
most popular form of arts activity, with 85 per cent of respondents reporting a
trip to the pictures in the past 12 months.
ninth annual Sweeney Arts Report, May 2001
I suggest that a dance company willing to utilise video and film in all their possibilities would find new ways of bringing in audiences; popularising dance; and creating work of many forms.
Why then, should dance not take off its blinkers, and explore in full the advantages of film, a medium that is globally patronised by far greater audiences than any other? Dance film is not a new endeavour; however, a dance company based upon film & video rather than upon the traditional live performances, tours, and seasons, is quite a revolutionary concept.
We have a situation where the general public are completely at home in the cinema or in front of the television. They have no problem spending money on these activities. They do however shrink from spending money on theatre tickets, which are so much more expensive than cinema tickets or video hire. This is one of the key reasons that I suggest dance should go into territory that is already familiar to its audience, instead of ploughing away at the same old exhausted ground and complaining that nothing is growing.
I believe that it is time for a shift in focus in the dance industry, in order to ensure the survival of the art form.
…new [ballets] appear every
year. They usually have a limited life-span, with, at best, the possibility of
joining the repertoire of one or more other companies later on. Rare indeed is
the ballet produced today which becomes a classic … even the most successful
plays of our time are successful only while they go around the world once; very
few will get regular revivals along with the classics of the past which we
already know and love. John Cargher
A company whose major output was on film would find itself with works having an almost eternal life-span. Thus the cinema-fed audiences (who do not understand that dance works are not as disposable as films, neither that the ticket prices must therefore be higher) may be won into a dance company’s audience having first seen some excellent film works by that company. And the company thus generates greater income by the sale of videos, as well as drawing people to their live performances. The ripples keep going, in fact, as the person who has such a video in their home is more likely to show it to friends if it is an interesting, entertaining and well-made film.
Using film in the way I have described above will necessitate a shift in attitudes towards what constitutes a dance company; a shift away from live performance will not be appealing to many dancers until it becomes an accepted way of working. So this shift would need to happen first and foremost in the minds of the company members. However if it could be achieved I believe that the effects on the dance world, and the world at large, would be significant.
Dance companies have used video to document their work for some decades, since video equipment became affordable. It is one of the only ways to maintain records of choreography, given the great difficulty of dance notation and the scarcity of notators. Some larger companies make very high quality recordings of their productions and sell VHS tapes to the general public for a profit. However these recordings are usually done using the camera as an observer in the audience, merely recording the proceedings of a live performance onstage. It is common knowledge that this kind of recording does not capture the true energy and thrill of the live performance, and therefore does not really make any serious attempt at increasing dance audiences because it is generally only appreciated by balletomanes and other dance practitioners. Therefore I do not believe that this use of video is a constructive or profitable use of a dance companies’ resources. It will certainly not contribute to their artistic development.
There are many, many more ways in which a dance company could utilise video and/or film to educate the public, promote their work, grow their audiences, and generate income with which to stabilise the company and foster creative development. Dance Film is just one of them, however I believe it is one of the most problematic and so I devote a substantial discussion to it.
Dance film (the use of the cinematographic art in capturing dance on camera) is in fact an art form separate from both dance and cinema and is therefore much more marginal even than dance is. It is not new; dance films have been created since the beginning of the twentieth century when the rise of cinematography coincided with the rise of contemporary dance. However I believe that it is a form crucial to the evangelism of dance. I have observed that some dance films produce extraordinarily beautiful images, much more appealing to the average person than the point-and-record dance filming described in the previous paragraph. Other dance films, such as the work of the Sydney-based Simon James, produce very post-modern images comparable to alternative music film-clips such as those seen on ABC’s music video programme ‘Rage’. I do not suggest that dance be forced into the mould of a music video, rather that we acknowledge the success the music video has had in evangelising popular music to the public, and apply some of the principles of aesthetics (for example) and marketing in order that dance film becomes a more palatable and widespread form of dance distribution to a wider audience than live dance could ever reach.
It is, at present, rare that dance companies per se will invest in the production of such films (although it is an area generating cumulative interest in the dance industry). What immediately springs to mind is that DV8 do produce carefully crafted films of their major works, and the National Ballet of Canada produced the exquisitely filmed and processed ballet ‘The Four Seasons’ in 1994. However these projects appear as the exception to the rule.
There are a few elements which discourage dance companies from producing dance films; first, the high cost of equipment and editing; second, marketing and distribution; third, such films often do not appeal to the current dance audience. Let me address each of these in turn.
1. The high cost of equipment and editing is largely a historical perception, one that is fast becoming nullified. Digital cameras are very affordable and the cost of editing software is falling quickly in our PC-reliant society. (Editing is still the most expensive part of the process to have done with expertise.) Perhaps most significantly, film is an area that holds enough glamour or kudos to attract willing helpers quite easily for those interested in getting started.
2. Dance film, as I mentioned, is a more marginal activity than dance, and yet, I don’t believe it needs to be. After making a dance film, the usual course of action is to apply for film festivals, in the hope that someone will see one’s work and commission a film, or give one a grant to produce another film. My arguments regarding this course of action were outlined in the first paragraph of this essay, which dealt with arts funding. I believe that the way a dance company should capitalise on the advantages of film is to market their films and sell them. The key is to make films in such a way that an audience can relate to them, rather than to be determined to break current bounds and create an artistic revolution.
3. Current dance audiences often dislike dance films for the same reason that they like the high budget point-and-record ballets; they want to see the steps. However I seriously doubt whether producing dance films will significantly discourage current dance-lovers from attending dance shows.